Box Design and Development

I decided that the box theme would be based around the theme of football, i decided this because the theme of the identities project will be based around ambition and the line between reality and the unreal. Below are the first stages of design of the football tunnel, this will be where the avatar will be based and will also cantain the rooms with all of the interactive items that i will include and explain about later.

Avatar Design and Development

Here is the design and development stages of my avatar. When designing the avatar i also decided to use the initial thoughts from my mood board therefore i included the adjectives that i used to describe my appearance and my personality. These words were tall, competative and fast. Therefore the appearance of my avatar is obviously tall, andtherfore i decided to portray the competative and quick side to the personality through making the avatar constantly run. the above images show all of the designs and development of the avatar so far.

Logo Design and Development

Here are the designs for my logo for my identities project. I thought about the logo portraying my personality and immedietly my initials came to mind, because there is noting else that can really get more personal to an individual. I also though about using my signature as part of my logo. I decided to experiment with some other ideas that i had in my head including my interests such as sports and watches. I then thought about the mood board that i had created earlier on in the project, so then the idea of strength came to mind, therefore i decided to experiment with the two arms in an arm wrestle, i thought that this could also portray competativeness. I then decided to move on o the city skyline because i had included this im my mood board and also thought that it could portray strength height and could also include my initials, this is the design that i think i will move along to develop further.

Second Life

Today was my first attempt at using second life, at first I was skeptical because I did not like the thought of spending time on a computer to socialize with random strangers. As I began to experiment I first found out that my computer did not have the required graphics card for the experience to work correctly, therefore the screen was very jolty and quite slow. I decided upon the name Willy Lectar and began straight away. I began to walk around the virtual world which is shown in the first image, I then decided to attempt a conversation with someone after 10 minutes exploring the virtual world. I began to talk to one random woman asking her advice on what to generally do In the virtual world, she didn’t seem too sure and then suggested that we should fly!!!! Therefore I began to follow her in the sky and very shortly after decided to log out. At this point I decided that I was not interested in logging in too soon in the future.

Research And Creativity

My creativity over the last few years has mainly been for personal satisfaction but also most of the best work was done for various school projects, mainly during A-Levels. The two main subjects were Art and ICT at which I best showed my creativity. Therefore I first thought that most of the work was for the teachers, but thinking about it the work was actually done for myself because it was me who wanted the qualifications out of the course not the teachers. There has also been cases in which the work was requested, in one particular case with my cousin’s sports shop, I was asked to design and create them a website, this was linked in with one A-Level project.
It has been done in this way because my school projects always took priority over personal projects, and I felt I could get more out of putting more time and effort into my school projects from the qualifications that I would receive. All the work I have done in the past has been decided by me however, I have been guided in different ways by teachers, tutors and family, to which may have made me change my decision.
In the future I would like my creating to be unique and independent, at this stage of my life I feel like I want my creating to be in web design. However this may change over the next couple of years with so many new fields to try at.

Research can help me get to the new places in many different ways, it can give me experience of successful work in specific areas, and it can also help me link other work in with my own for the future. Out of the four starting points I feel most drawn to the “In Front Of” method. I chose this because I feel that when I see other people’s reactions it can help me as it opens new thoughts in different areas. However, individually I am not brilliant at reviewing work, without some basic information or at least one opinion on the work. The method I feel most wary of is the “Behind” method, this sounds the most complicated although it sounds interesting to look into work in more detail, however I do not feel that I would use this method as a first choice. I do not think that any of the staring points are irrelevant; I feel that they could all help in one way or another.

Mood Board 1

Above is the mood board for my Avatar, i thought of 5 adjectives to decribe my personality or appearance. The first word i came up with about my appearance is tall, because i am quite tall, i used the empire state building to symbolise my height. The second word i came up with was fast, i used a cheetah to symbolise my speed, as when i was younger i used to be very quick at running. I then searched the meaning of my name on the internet, most of the websites i found described my name as 'protector' or 'resolute protector' therefore i represented this as a shield. I then struggled to come up with two more words, so i asked my flatmates and i was described as reliable and competative, therefore i represented reliability with the large rock in the background and my competative nature is represented through the boxers.

Practitioner Development

I feel that I do not purposely go out to improve my practitioner development day by day, I think that it happens in everyday activities and it happens without me even realising it. One prime example of this is when I’m listening to music on my ipod, and even more when I’m downloading new music on the computer. I feel that this is useful in many ways, because when I create a project, say for university, which requires a soundtrack I usually manage to think of a perfect fitting soundtrack to add to it, from my music collection. Therefore, I feel that it is important to keep up to date with music as it can always come in useful, most importantly to develop skills. For example, my one shot video required a song which dragged on to portray awkwardness, the song Zorba the Greek immediately popped into my head. I had this ion my music collection, and I had originally discovered the song from a television advert.

Therefore Watching TV is also a useful way of developing practitioner skills. Television adverts express many different methods of getting a message across to an audience, and this is very useful for a Multimedia student like myself. Many adverts nowadays are animated and as of recent many cars companies have expressed their cars in extravagant ways using animation. The methods used are often useful to use in my own independent projects, as their ideas seem to be fresh and new and very useful.

One other method of developing skills is actually making products. On a couple of occasions, I have been asked to create a website for two different organisations. This is a form of independent learning because I had to create a website for the first time all by myself without the help of teachers, tutors and other pupils. I used the internet to develop my skills on creating the websites; online flash tutorials helped me in many ways. This method was probably the most beneficial for me as it helped me create the perfect animations for the websites I created. All the animations I found were free, and accessible to all, which also made life a lot easier.

One final example of independent study is when my younger brother requires help from me with his ICT A-Level work. This has happened many times when he asks me questions that I do not have the answer to, mainly when using flash. However we both try to solve the problem, mainly with trial and error when using flash, or many times we have looked on the online tutorials. This is not independent learning as in the sense of me working on my own, but I feel that it easily fits into the category of me developing my practitioner skills.